Most would agree that road trips are not a lot of fun, especially road trips with a one-year-old and a 2.5-year-old. Toddlers get a bad rap for a reason. They are needy and loud and have very short attention spans, so why were my husband and I locking ourselves up in a car for 12 hours with them? Good question, but maybe the why doesn’t matter. I guess it’s the how that you are here for!
Honestly, we love to travel and we’ve found a way to make that work even as we became parents and grew our family to four. As the kids get bigger, trips become a little more about them. This trip was a combo of visiting my husband’s former home in Philadelphia and showing the kids some cool places, namely Sesame Place.
So here are my top 5 pieces of advice for road-tripping with toddlers:
- Prepare them for the journey. While the one-year-old could probably care less, the toddler was certainly going to notice being in one place all day long. So for about a week before we left, I’d talk to Elliot about what we were going to do and how we were going to be in the car for a long time. I also told him we were going to visit Elmo and his friends. This gave him something to look forward to and I hope helped him to see why he needed to sit buckled in his car seat for that long.
- Plan to keep them busy. This is an area my husband and I always disagree on, but as a mom, I find it really important to “over prepare” with activities, snacks, and toys. In his defense, I’ve never needed all of what I’ve prepared, but I don’t want to learn the hard way what happens when I don’t have enough to keep them busy. I brought one of their small toy baskets and filled it with toys they’d both enjoy. I bought a new DVD for the blue-ray player. I got a busy board felt book. And most importantly, I got lots of snacks. I have found this to be the single most important piece for flights, car trips, and stroller walks with my friends. Don’t leave home without them.
- Make sure they are comfortable. Dress your kiddos in some of their coziest clothes and don’t worry about the shoes or hats. We mostly had them in play clothes so they were cozy in their spots. Make sure their car seats are in the best spot for them to be safe and comfortable. When it gets close to bedtime, change them into their jammies. This will help once you get to where you are going!
- Plan to stop as often as possible. I think experts recommend getting babies and toddlers out of their car seats every two to three hours. We probably did closer to three to four hours, but when we did, we let the baby crawl around the car or restaurant a bit and let the 2.5-year-old run wild for as long as we could. Not only is stopping good for their bodies, but it breaks up the journey a bit. On the way up to Philly, we stayed in a hotel half-way, while on the way home, we did it all in one shot.
- Be flexible. Flexibility will always and forever make my top five list. It’s really the key to parenting little guys. We had a plan, but we also were quick to change the plan based on how they were doing. Thankfully, they are also pretty flexible, so we only had to make a couple of unplanned stops.
